Thank you for these beautiful posts. How fortunate are we to be part of this purple love!?

Sending it out to all of you who have shared your stories xxx

"The biggest experience in my life!

Opening for @Prince & spending time at Paisley Park "

"Its was the coolest experience,

knowing I was Probably the youngest person to open up for Prince..

I mean..he is such a Public Figure

Everyone knows him"

~Brianna Leah~

“We know he had this mystique,”

“but last time I saw him, he sat next to me and said,

‘Do you need anything?’

And my feet hurt—it was a post-Grammy party.

So I said, ‘I need some socks,’ and—do you know?

—he brought me socks"

.... this just feels too soon.

Prince was in his creative power!

It’s shocking,

and it makes me so sad and, frankly, kind of mad.

I just loved him

and he was so kind to me.”

~India Arie~

"When I met him — – I saw he was so vulnerable at that period in his life,

....... I saw my role – and I don’t know if this came down from

the heavens or what spiritual effect, but I said to myself,

“I’m not here as mister manager in effect.

I am here to protect this kid.”

I know it’s hard for people when you say “protect” –

the icon in front of thousands of people —

but take yourself back and just picture an 18-year-old kid coming to your door.

"He was wearing jeans with an ironed crease down the middle of them.

Some kind of brown boots.

It was very well put together, even though they were not classy clothes,

because he couldn’t afford it.

He was getting stuff right away when I met him,

understanding things, and he had these great eyes that were really magnificent,

and they were, I don't want to say truly almond-shaped,

but they were just beautiful eyes. "

"He was not a very tall guy, as you know.

Then he had a huge afro.

But he was very reserved.

He probably played guitar at my house,

maybe played the piano just a little bit,

but mainly he wanted to talk.

. I could see he was a very bright young man.

There was no bullshit:

he had the emotional maturity of a 40-year-old CEO of a company,

and even though he did not understand the business side of it,

I could see he had a focus."

"There was a focus, there was a brilliance of intelligence.

He understood concepts.

And this guy was just out of North Minneapolis—

he'd just graduated high school practically.

Most kids that age are driving cars a 150 miles an hour,

doing stupid things, and testing their testosterone.

He was not like that.

From hearing the demo and meeting him in person,

I knew I had to move quickly and get him signed to a contract"

"An interesting story about the demo tape:

there's a song that's on the first album called "Baby" and he wanted an orchestra.

The only orchestra I knew in town at that point was a radio station orchestra,

so I brought them in.

When I came down to the studio to see how things were going on,

Prince was fit to be tied, and these guys were like 90 years old, all of them,

and they couldn't quite get it.

Prince worked with them and worked with them—

I don't know how much he knew about writing music at that point,

but he worked with them to the point where they rewrote and charted exactly

the way he wanted it.

Here's this 18-year-old kid working with these pretty cool players,

orchestra guys, and

he rewrote those parts and got 'em to do it."

"I really loved him as a human being."

"Prince is an anomaly.

Not everybody is as ballsy as him

and can tell everybody to fuck off,

get their way,

and make it happen"

~Owen Husney~

DR FINK

Prince loved women and respected their work,

and this is a song that pays homage to strong women and women struggling in society.

It’s also funky as hell,

one of the funkiest songs on the 1999 record.

Innovative too – it starts with that great drum programming,

the Linn Drum supplemented by other electronic drum sounds.

...Its a long cut (18:9) and has evolution from a musical standpoint

Starts with those traffic noises:

innovative – not a typical arrangement or structure,

he was straying all the time from conventional pop music norms and experimenting.

That whole album was filled with that,

but that’s one of my favourites for its arrangement,

message,

funky guitars,

and that keyboard solo,

technically very adept.

It was a challenge for me to learn it,

a testament to his keyboard skills.

He was just a monster keyboard player.

Dr.Fink

~mic de la Prandole~

[Edited 9/27/18 4:18am]

[Edited 9/27/18 4:19am]

“Xtraloveable” was an old school, classic Prince track that dated back to the ‘80s.

Prince would sometimes pull tapes out of the Vault

(The Purple One’s mythical heavily secured library rumored to contain

thousands of unreleased songs, videos and concert footage).

He would bring them in and put them in the tape machine.

Until the end, Prince was still using analog tape.

He would only go to Pro Tools at the end of a session.

He used the tapes to get him inspired.

He was always reinventing and taking inspiration from those tapes in the Vault".

"Prince had the most amazing horn section.

It was amazing to see him arrange on the spot.

He had all the parts in his head and they weren’t simple horn parts.

That was the thing about Prince. He made you strive for perfection.

Just imagine playing drums for him.

That’s how I started in music…as a drummer. So one evening Prince comes to me and says, “Can you play?”

He was trying to find the right percussion sound for a track on the album.

So I go into the studio, and Prince was basically engineering the drum sound.

He turns on the mic and says, “Play Superstition".

I’m playing the drums and Prince jumps on the clavinet

and we were just jamming for like 15 minutes straight!

After that he turns around and says,

“You’re hired.”

[Laughs]

"I was a lot luckier than a lot of studio engineers that ended

up working with Prince over the years.

Because I was lucky enough to have a friendship with him before I started to work on

[HitnRUN Phase II].

I could actually have a viewpoint on something he was doing creatively.

You would hear all the classic stories that he wouldn’t even talk to engineers.

That’s not to say that I had a lot of advice to give to someone like Prince.

Because, let’s face it, he’s Prince [laughs].

He didn’t really need an engineer. He was pretty much brilliant at that, too"

~Justin Stanley~

[Edited 9/27/18 4:41am]

[Edited 9/27/18 4:42am]

[Edited 9/27/18 4:57am]

"My first recollection of seeing him was a dress rehearsal

for one of his early tours.

I was next to another musician, a couple other guys that were up-and-comers

and that thought they were hot shit, and we were watching Prince

The guy turned to me and said,

“I’m fucking embarrassed to be alive.”

And that’s how I felt.

He was so good.

It was like, “What are we doing?

This guy is, like,

on a different planet than we are.”

"It was showmanship, it was rock & roll, it was fun,

it was great. I think it helped everyone around.

It made us all think that Minneapolis wasn’t the dour town

that we tried to pretend it was.

He was like a ray of light in a very cautious place.

He was a star.

He made no bones about it.

He was glitz to a place that wasn’t used to it.

”

"People like to paint him as a reclusive this or that;

I think he was genuinely truly, truly shy.

But one thing says a lot about him:

I was there making a solo record...

and I got a message that said that my friend had just died.

I was truly rattled,

and the next time I went back into the studio,

he had filled it up with balloons.

Now I’m gonna cry."

"I’ve spent more time with Bob Dylan,

and I’ve got to say that I was more in awe of Prince.

I can’t think of anyone better

– an all-around composer, musician, guitarist, star, showman,

the whole package,

If Elvis wrote all of his songs and played guitar,

it still wouldn’t quite be there.

He’d play Jimi Hendrix-style, between his legs and behind his back.

And then he’d do the splits.

He could put the guitar down, and Jimi would become James Brown.

He could hold the crowd like Mick Jagger,

but could Mick Jagger play the piano like that?

And then, lyrically, there’s something like, “When Doves Cry.”

There’s obviously more going on there than meets the booty"

I remember a little scuffle broke out in front of the stage one night

and Prince said,

“Stop fighting, you’ll mess up your clothes"

~Paul Westerberg~

Prince was a Mad Musican Genius of Incomparable Confidence

"His music was blind to notions of race.

He worked in funk and R&B and soul balladry and jazz,

but he also played guitar like a volcano and rocked out

in a manner that put the lie to the myth that

black America walked away from the rock ‘n’ roll it invented once Jimi Hendrix died.

He never paid attention to old distinctions between

“live” rock and “synthetic” electronic music,

taking a mix of blistering six-string fretwork and ice-cold drum-machine

rhythms to the top of charts around the world in

1984 with Purple Rain’s “When Doves Cry” –

on a track from which he’d chopped the bassline out entirely,

no less –

while everyone was too busy dancing to notice the ground being broken."

"Prince was a welcome terror to Middle American ideas of “decency.”

Early recordings like Dirty Mind and Controversy

and even the massive Purple Rain

had parents’ groups and religious right-wingers in a perpetual

tizzy over their unabashed delight in pure,

sex-for-sex’s-sake sexuality.

Prince only stirred the pot more by

folding his strong personal connection to his God in the mix along with it.

And he saw no problem, either, in loving the ladies while frequently

dressing like the gayest thing since gay came to Gaytown.

Those were other people’s hang-ups,

not Prince’s."

~Ben Rayner~

Piece of junkmail sent to Prince’s personal PO Box.

Addressed to Prince R. Nelson,

the unopened envelope was sent out by Billboard Magazine and reads:

According to Prince’s former personal assistant Therese Stoulil,

he placed the envelope on her desk one day with a sly smile and said simply

"Tell Billboard – I’ve got this covered."

"The man honed his craft..he worked and he worked and he worked.."

"I have never in my Life seen another Human Being have that "Presence"

when he walked into the room.

We had a huge after Party at Paisley for the Special Olympics...

Everybody was there the Kennedys the Shrivers Kristy Alley was there,

it was high Profile people..it was Hollywood...

and

WHen Prince walked in...I mean It was amazing to Witness...

To just see the mystery this man created, the Aura..

People just ~P a r t e d ~

you could just hear it VIBRATE...I mean..

it was just magical..

Ive never seen another Human Being have that Mystique"

~Therese Stoulil~

Princes Personal assistant 1986-1996

~Mayte Garcia~

Photo Credit Afshin Shahidi (2004)

L'Uomo Vogue

"He was playing keyboards at first with us.

His dad gave him the guitar, a giant Gibson hollow body that was bigger than him.

I said,

‘You ain’t gonna be able to play that.’

He said,

‘You watch, I’m gonna be as good as Carlos Santana.’

Within days Prince was playing “Soul Sacrifice,”

Santana’s instrumental showpiece,

“to a tee, with the solo and everything.

He was something unique.

He was amazing.”

PHOTO Robert Whitman

~Charles “Chazz” Smith~

Prince’s Cousin, MPLS St Paul

“His character has always been the same since he was five.

This was his dream;

this is what he was brought here to do

and he did a great job.

“He began to play the piano when he was five,

and my dad would say,

‘Boy, stop pounding on those keys,”

but he went on and played the piano.

“I saw this beautiful mansion that he has.

It was nice.

You only could stay with Prince only two days you know.

I think he doesn’t like to say goodbye or become emotionally attached to people.

"So whatever you’re gonna do, ask your questions,

and have a good time with him,

because he disappears.

Next thing you know here comes your

luggage and everything

and you’re going to go.”

Prince's purple house, Kiowa Trail, Chanhassen, MN, 1983

~Sharon Nelson~

Prince’s half sister, ABC 2020

He was one of the funniest people I’ve ever met,

always joking around.

He’d prank call me.

Once he showed up at my hotel at 4:00am to go on a donut mission.

Another time, I fell asleep on his private plane

and woke up to him throwing popcorn at me.

We spoke about everything from music to religion to makeup—we’d compare eyeliner.

I’ll never forget one moment:

I was meeting him in LA—he would always stay at the Beverly Hills Hotel—and he shut down 1912, the downstairs bar,

so it was just the two of us.

There he expressed how much he believed in me,

and how he wanted to work on an album with me after I completed Don't Explain.

Then he walked over to the piano and started playing.

I was like, “This is not happening.”

He had me just jamming along with him.

That’s something I’ll never forget.

We were in touch every other day until he passed..we became really good friends.

It was a student teacher/mentor relationship..

He was really into my voice.

He always said he thought I had such an Analog Voice.

"Prince really believed in me and I am forever grateful.”

~Snoh Alegra~

“He taught me so much and asked nothing in return,”.

“He was ahead of his time and could see beyond all barriers and false boundaries.

He saw a place where art could support the artist who created

it via ownership and licensing".

"I call him my sensei.”

~Anita Baker ~

“He did things for people that he didn’t want anyone to know about,”

offers up Capri,

who remembers Prince sitting in the deejay booth for an entire set,

just observing before finally telling Capri that he learned something by watching.

“Such a big loss.

I remember spinning for him where Purple Rain was made …

He would pay for people’s [recording] sessions,

for those artists who didn’t have.

He would pay their rent.

If you were not doing well,

he would reach out and nobody would know.

As big as he was in real life,

he was a regular dude when you saw him.”

~Kid Capri~

Lovejunky, these Positivity threads are masterful, like Prince. All the other threads should just fold up their penises and go home.

"He lived music all the time.

He never stopped.

U know whereas other people,

other big stars i think may go days without touching

their instrument or thinking about writing a song…

until the record company says i have an album to do so i'd better start thinking about songs…

That was never the case with him.

It was like every day, more songs.

Every day pick up instruments and play.

And that’s why he wanted to always have a band around to do it,

like i wanna play, i wanna do it"

"You were proud that you were there with him so you wanted to be your best,

but the ultimate motivator was fear.

So many amazing moments were tempered with fear. . . .

He got more out of me than I ever thought possible.

He’d be like, “What are you playing over there?”

I’d say, “Keyboard.”

Then he’d say, “Well, what’s your other hand doing? I’m paying for two hands.”

As soon as I’d mastered a couple parts he’d say,

“Can you do this part too?”

I’d be like, “Well, no. I’m doing this [other thing] with both hands.”

And he’d say, “Figure out a way to do it.”

"I cut my teeth with cover bands and ended up hooking up with the Steele family.Prince came down to see us a new club.

He would come with Kim Basinger, and they would sit up there and watch.

During rehearsals, the keyboard player decided he didn’t want to do it

and I was the first call. I’m like, “Of course.”

One day Prince came to the rehearsals.

He’d written all these songs and asked Sonny [Thompson, bassist]

and Michael [Bland] and I to stay after and help him with a song.

We helped him finish a song he’d written on piano,

and he wanted to see what it would sound like if we did this or that.

He ended up recording the song and it ended up going on the record like that,

and that song was “Diamonds and Pearls.”

Five months later I got the call to join this band,

and that started that new era, the New Power Generation"

There was a cage with two doves in it.

That was upstairs right by the wardrobe department.

It overlooked the atrium.

It was magical.

The wardrobe department would just make us clothes around the clock.

You get called in there and you get shown a bunch of designs.

“Which one do you like?”

“Well, I like this one, I like that one.”

“OK, we’ll have those run by Prince and have it approved.”

And they would make you a tailor-fitted outfit with matching shoes.

It was wild.

It was really an exciting time'

"Always dressed to the nines,

always the makeup just perfect all the time.

You never heard him play or hit a wrong note.

You never heard him practicing a lyric or running over it to make sure he had it right.

Back in the early Nineties when he was doing

choreography with the dancers in the band,

you never saw him practice those dance steps.

These dancers would be working it out all day long, and then he would walk in:

“All right, show it to me.”

And he would watch the routine and say,

“All right, got it.” And then he’d walk away.

We would get up on the stage,

and he would nail it with everybody just perfectly.

And it’s like, “Oh, my gosh.

” He just never missed."

In a weird way his death helped a lot of stuff.

[My stepson] has known me since he was 3 1/2 and knew

[I played with Prince], but it didn’t mean much to him.

Then, when Prince died, he was 17 and saw the Eiffel Tower purple

and the worldwide phenomenon, and he got it.

With [my wife] it was similar.

She didn’t know me during the Prince time of my life,

so it was shrouded in mystery because I didn’t talk about it much.

Nobody did.

[During my speech at his memorial] I finally broke down and wept.

I said stuff about how he trusted me and believed in me and what that did for me.

She finally understood the whole thing.

~Tommy Barbarella~

[Edited 10/4/18 4:03am]

[Edited 10/4/18 5:05am]

“He had just finished the ‘Lovesexy’ tour and he came down to Bunkers to see me play,”

“He decided he had a use for me and I joined the band the following year.”

“It was difficult to grasp the magnitude of the situation,”

“I was 19. I had never been anywhere or done anything,

and here I was working with this major superstar.

“Like any other boss, or anyone who takes their business seriously

Prince never accepted anything less than your best.

But the difference between Prince and almost anybody else is that

he wasn’t asking anybody to do anything he himself wouldn’t do.”

"Shortly before I got with Prince, I started to hear

Sly Stone records—but not Fresh.

That record hadn’t happened for me yet.

Then when I got with Prince, he said something to me like,

“Play the break like on Fresh, like how he goes over the barlines on ‘In Time.’”

I’m like, “What’s Fresh”?

He’s like,

“Oh man, you haven’t heard ‘In Time’ on Fresh?

You’ve got to stay after school.” [laughs]"

"Prince really ought to be a music professor somewhere—

and not just popular music.

There were many times I would be goofing off or hanging

out in Studio A waiting for rehearsal to start,

and I’d go to put a CD in, press “open,”

and Stravinsky’s The Firebird Suite would be in there,

or some Duke Ellington CD.

It doesn’t stop for him with the popular form"

"some of the recording sessions I did at Paisley and

one of the ones I did in more recent years was for an album that Prince released called Lotusflow3r.

..... it started out that I walked in and he says,

“I heard that Soul Asylum song.”

He said, “That’s a great song, why wasn’t why wasn’t it a hit?”

Prince was like,

“That was supposed to be a huge hit, what happened?”

Then he says, “Well, can I cover it? I wanna record that song.”

I said I imagined so, and he said

“Well, will you call Dave right now and ask him?”

So I stepped out of the studio and I got Dave on the cell phone — which is hard enough to do anyway — and he just happened to pick up, and I told him,

“Prince wants to cover ‘Stand Up and Be Strong’ but he doesn’t want to do it

without your approval, he doesn’t want any problems later on.

” Dave was like, “Yeah absolutely man, I’m honored.”

So we cut a version of it

that’s in the vault somewhere,

Prince also pushed me to always be open to a new idea,

a new road and not to hold myself back with indecision.

Before I met him,

I was very hesitant about making mistakes.

He’d ask me to play something and I’d want to think about it first.

He’d say ‘Put your hands (on your instrument).

You’ll find the city,

then you’ll be able to find the street.’ ”

"...this profound sense of loss is inescapable.

Whether or not I am playing his music,

I hear it constantly...... whatever closure is supposed to come, well, .

I’m not really there yet.

There’s just an empty hole,

I don’t know how to explain it.”

~Michael Bland~

[Edited 10/4/18 15:06pm]

never stop ..this ..thread

^^^it is true this thread is like his eternity candle.

luvsexy4all said:

In 1991 and again in 1994 Piranha Music and D.C. Comics

released several standalone issues of a Prince comic book,

with writing by none other than the great late Dwayne McDuffie

Cover Art

Brian Collard

The first, entitled

Prince: Alter Ego, featured art by Denys Cowan and was what writer

Patrick Reed at Depth of Field Magazine calls

“a spiritual sequel to Purple Rain,

but with metaphysical insanity in place of showstopping musical numbers.”

Within its pages,

Prince spends his time driving a customized motorcycle around,

engaging in philosophizing,

wistful reminiscing, and sad sultry glances.

And then he breaks up a gang war,

goes for a ride on his motorcycle,

romances a mysterious woman,

and stages a musical battle with a former bandmate for the soul of Minneapolis.

He appears to be a master of martial arts,

and repeatedly refers to himself as Batman.

The first issue is the one with Prince on the motorcycle.

It’s basically a comic book history of Prince’s musical career.

[Edited 10/5/18 2:52am]

Prince played his first shows as a solo artist at the Capri Theater,

which sits at the corner of Broadway and Logan Ave. N. in north Minneapolis.

The shows took place on January 5 and 6, 1979, and the proceeds from the tickets sold the first night (which cost a mere $4) went toward the Capri.

Prince’s career was already moving forward by the time he played the Capri shows—

he had signed to Warner Bros. Records in 1976 when he was just 17,

and recorded and released his debut For You in early 1978.

But it wasn’t until the winter of 1979 that Prince formed a band and performed his first solo show. At the Capri, he was joined by childhood friend and former Grand Central and Champagne bandmate André Cymone, Bobby Z, Dez Dickerson, Matt Fink, and Gayle Chapman

According to a fan setlist

Prince began the first show with the title track off his debut album, “For You,”

and also performed the songs “Soft and Wet,” “So Blue,” and “Just as Long as We’re Together.” Longtime Star Tribune critic Jon Bream was at the show and write that Prince

“strutted across the stage with grand Mick Jagger-like moves and gestures.

He was cool,

he was cocky,

and he was sexy.

~The Current~

Images Google

Thank you again for these amazing posts! $4.75 hehe! Also, choreography is learnt by actually doing the steps usually, for Prince to pick it up by just watching is incredible. He must have had a photographic memory. What an amazing man!

When I met Prince's sister Tyka, I told her how much I loved Prince. Of course he didn't know me but she came straight out with 'He loved you too'. He loves us all. Love is the only gold Purple Fam. Peace and be wild. xxx

^^ and a 75 cent discount in advance. Guess Prince was doing benefits from the very beginning. Love is the only gold, so true. Sounds like a Prince song.


And he saw no problem, either, in loving the ladies while frequently dressing like the gayest thing since gay came to Gaytown. Those were other people’s hang-ups, not Prince’s.

This line cracks me up out loud every single time I read it.

[Edited 10/5/18 18:28pm]

On October 20, 1988, Prince played deep into the night at Citi,

one of a series of clubs that haunted

15 Landsdowne Street for the better part of four decades.

The concert became an oft-recounted event in the history of music in Boston for a number of reasons.

It was a secretive, late-night jam session after

his arena show at the Worcester Centrum that evening.

Prince puts on a Royal Show

Prince pulled out all the stops,

delivering a 2 1/2-hour knockout that crossed

Broadway theatrics with the gleeful buoyancy of “The Wizard of Oz.”

~BOSTON GLOBE~

Though the show was a planned part of his tour that year — according to reviews,

reports, and itineraries, he did the same thing in a number of cities —

accounts from the evening, both formal

and informal

(the dozens of “I was there, man” ...........

tell of a loose set of jams that celebrated musical curiosity and showmanship

More importantly,

the show plays a role in the lore of our music scene because it is a

story of the “hidden” side of Prince that many have tried to document

After a shocking accident in which Frederick Cameron Weber,

a Berklee freshman,was struck and killed by at car while waiting

in line to purchase tickets to the Worcester show

Prince donated proceeds, of the Citi show to a scholarship fund in Weber’s name,

It’s not the surreptitious philanthropy that Van Jones has described and brought to light,

but it was a modest and magnanimous gesture from a

larger-than-life MTV star at a time when our pop idols seemed inaccessible and remote.